Moshing is the modern dance craze

Moshing has developed into a popular and questionable dangerous craze among the younger generation. Within many UK festivals moshing has created problems within the youth by enthusing on aggression and physical violence.

Among the majority of music genres, moshing has become increasingly popular within music types such as grime, drum and bass, EDM, rock, metal etc. Young people are constantly influenced by popular icons and music video demonstrations that moshing to music is the way forward. Both Reading festival in 2017 and Boomtown festival in 2016 had incidents which frighten the parents of these teens questioning on the safety of gigs, concerts, and festivals. Although this common worry, young people are enjoying music like never before, claiming they feel a heavy connection between music and emotion.

One iconic figure in modern rap music today demonstrates this clearly; Travis Scott. With an Instagram following of 6.6m and Twitter following of 2.5m, he can so easily influence modern day trends like fashion and dancing within social media. A live video was posted on Youtube which almost went viral on social media, of Travis Scott performing his hit song ‘goosebumps’ 14 times in Oklahoma, May 2017 to break the world record of how many times a song can be performed live in a row. Travis was released without bail after police arrested him for ‘inciting a riot’.

Although many mothers and fathers will be freaking out over violent music events, young people are expressing their emotions like never before, arguing that displays of aggression within dancing ables them to rebel against how unfair and injustice society is. Reva Johns, a music student at ACM Guildford comments that ‘young people did not just say hey, let’s invent a really violent dance craze. It’s been morphed into moshing from all kinds of stereotypes because young people are so emotional and passionate about equality and fairness.’